While everyone seemed to be on board with the idea that really, there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the Xbox One and the PS4, Microsoft has gone and upset the whole apple cart by announcing that since its E3 showing, the Xbox One GPU has actually got that little bit faster.
Announced by corporate VP at Microsoft, Marc Whitten, he said that a new driver had been added to the console's software suite, as part of new beta builds of the Xbox One's OS being put out almost daily by internal Microsoft developers. Known as the Mono driver, it's a graphics driver that is specifically optimised for the One.
You'd expect it to be though, being a console and not a multi-hardware supporting PC, but whatever.
Whitten continued by saying that: "You start with the base DirectX driver, and then you take out all parts that don't look like Xbox One and you add in everything that really optimises that experience. Almost all of our content partners have really picked it up now, and I think it's made a really nice improvement."
On top of that, there's been some tweaks to the actual GPU in the One, bumping its internal clock speed from 800MHZ, to a slightly faster 853MHZ.
This came about through testing what Whitten describes as the "thermal envelope" of the console, where apparently it can often go either way depending on how hot the thing gets. Fortunately for Microsoft, it turned out to run cooler than expected, so they were able to crank out another seven percent or so of clock speed.
This news may have gamers worried though, considering all the problems Microsoft had with its Xbox 360 soon after launch,. with the infamous red ring of death causing over a billion dollars worth of returns.
However, with this console, Microsoft has been smart enough to place a large fan directly over the heatsink instead of at the rear and on top of that has pledged a near silent running machine - so it sounds as if a lot more work has gone into the thermal dynamics of the console.
But that's not what matters. What matters is what you guys think. Is this good news, bad news, who cares news? Let us know below.
Thanks AGB for the heads up.
